Career Summary

Biography

Suzanne commenced with the University in 1985 in the former Hunter Institute for Higher Education after various research and policy positions in local, state and federal governments and private consultancies. She has been involved in the administration of postgraduate business courses since 1993. Her teaching areas are organisation theory, management and research courses. Her research interests are in higher education policy, business schools and management education and academic labour. She is currently the Assistant Dean Research Training in the Faculty of Business and Law and President of the University of Newcastle Branch of the NTEU.

CollaborationsMy main research colleagues in the higher education are Professor James Guthrie and Assoc Professor Ruth Neumann. More recently, I have been working with colleagues in the Faculty of Business and Law on two research projects: sessional academics and the Master of Professional Accounting (MPACC). The sessional academics project team includes: Egbert Groen, Andrew Nadolny, Karen McNeil, Asit Bhattacharrya, Tracy Levett-Jones and Kathryn Holmes. In 2012 John Burgess, Julia Connell and Robyn May joined the team. The MPACC project includes: Hock-Thye Chan, Neelam Goela, Marcus Rodrigs, Katerina Stratilas, Christine Yap and Jackie Yong

Publications

For publications that are currently unpublished or in-press, details are shown in italics.

Chapter (3 outputs)

Year

Citation

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Link

2010

Ryan SE, 'Business and accounting education: Do they have a future in the University?', Accounting Education at a Crossroad in 2010, Centre for Accounting, Governance and Sustainability and The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia, South Australia 22-28 (2010) [B2]

The McDonaldization of higher education refers to the transformation of universities from knowledge generators to rational service organizations or Â¿McUniversitiesÂ¿. This is ref... [more]

The McDonaldization of higher education refers to the transformation of universities from knowledge generators to rational service organizations or Â¿McUniversitiesÂ¿. This is reflected in the growing dependence on a casualized academic workforce. The article explores the extent to which the McDonaldization thesis applies to universities by comparing the experiences of casual academics with those of McDonald's employees. Survey and interview findings from an Australian university are compared with Gould's research on McDonald's casual employees in Australia. Aside from their employment status, the two groups have nothing in common. McDonald's employees experience routine work organization with good management and career prospects while casual academics experience stimulating work within a context of poor management and lack of career paths. This article questions the accuracy of applying the McDonaldization thesis to higher education based on the failure of the McJobs descriptor to withstand empirical scrutiny.

West AD, Ryan SE, 'A review of literature on training transfer motivation and psychological capital', 25th Annual Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management (ANZAM) Conference: The Future of Work and Organisations, Wellington, NZ (2011) [E1]

2011

Connell J, Ryan SE, 'Women and management education: Has anything changed?', 25th Annual Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management (ANZAM) Conference: The Future of Work and Organisations, Wellington, NZ (2011) [E1]